Customer Reviews

Advanced Maya Texturing and Lighting

5 star:		(3)
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I purchased this book about a year ago after upgrading my Maya (to 2009) following a lapse since Alias Maya 7. I crossed over to Maya from another package, and found its general design, and approaches to modeling, texturing/shading, and rendering to be both (seemingly) different and *significantly* more complex. Over this past year, Lee's book is among several on various Maya-related topics I've worked my way through. Learning even just a few functional areas of an application as broad and deep as Maya on one's own is an intimidating thing, even if experienced in another 3D app. But I have to give this book, and the project/tutorial assets that come with it, a large measure of credit for helping me get over the "fear and loathing" hump to where I really feel comfortable with Maya's shading/lighting/rendering workflow, and Maya's internal design approach in general. I'm sure I'll come back to this book many, many times in the course of my creative work, and highly recommend it to every Maya user. For those coming into Maya from other packages, I don't think you'll find a better general reference resource.

Even more detailed lighting techniques and texturing included, with the newer versions of Maya, and better detailed instructions, as well as more maya demo files on disc, to show one how to achieve basically any desired look in lighting and texturing, not just hyper-realism.

I haven't gotten through the entire book yet but I am impressed with it so far. The author talks about techniques in an interesting manner making you want to read more. I have a multitude of Maya books and so far this one is my favorite.